Archive for the 'Heidelberg' Category

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Since the school only will pay for things we do in Europe related to PV, we decided to do as much PV-related stuff as we could. Our institute at UNSW used to be the largest solar research group in the world. We have roughly 70 to 100 researchers at the Centre I think. Our major competition comes from the Fraunhofer ISE in Germany. They used to be about the same size as us, but in recent years have undergone explosive growth and now they eclipse us: 700 researchers, and they can do everything from making their own mc-Si wafers, to module lifetime testing. Everything. It’s mad. So we decided to visit. Fraunhofer ISE is located in Freiburg, and since Heidelberg lies between Frankfurt and Freiburg, we took a pit-stop on the way south.

Charmed Martha struck again here. Of the 3 days we were in Germany, 2 of them were cool, crappy and rainy. Luckily the Heidelberg day was beautiful, sunny and warm. We locked our bags up at the train station, and walked a fair way to the castle along the river. The day and the way were so picturesque that the guys were stopping to take photos about every 5 feet. I’ve cut it down a bit for the post. We enjoyed the castle, I bought us cheap sandwich fixings for lunch, tried to get Roland to resist all the tourist trinkets, and were pretty jet-lagged and tired by then end and for a while just died and sat at a bus stop watching buses go by.